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Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American
artist born in Brooklyn, New
York. He gained fame, first as a graffiti artist in New York
City, and then as a highly successful avant-garde artist in the
international art scene of the 1980s.
His mother, Matilde, was
Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard, was of Haitian origin. At an early
age, Basquiat displayed an aptitude for art and was encouraged by his
mother to draw, paint, and to participate in other art-related
activities.
In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al
Diaz started spray-painting graffiti art on subway cars and slum
buildings in lower Manhattan, adding the infamous signature of SAMO,
meaning Same Old Shit.
In 1978, Basquiat left home and quit
school a year before graduating. He lived with friends and survived by
selling T-shirts and postcards. In 1980, he participated in a
multi-artist exhibition, sponsored by Collaborative Projects
Incorporated. During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his
works around New York alongside artists such as Keith Haring and
Barbara Kruger.
Basquiat's art career is known for his three
broad, though overlapping styles. In the earliest period, from 1980 to
late 1982, Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas, most often
depicting skeletal figures and mask-like faces that expressed his
obsession with mortality, and imagery derived from his street
existence, such as automobiles, buildings, police, children's sidewalk
games, and graffiti.
A middle period from late 1982 to 1985
features multipanel paintings and individual canvases with exposed
stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and seemingly
unrelated imagery. These works reveal a strong interest in Basquiat's
black and Hispanic identity and his identification with historical and
contemporary black figures and events.
The last style, from
about 1986 to Basquiat's death in 1988, displays a new type of
figurative depiction, in a new painterly style, with different symbols,
sources, and content.
In 1983, Basquiat befriended Andy Warhol
and the two made a number of collaborative works. Often, they discussed
and disputed about the lacking African American art and literature.
They also painted together, influencing each others' work. Some claimed
that Andy Warhol was merely using Basquiat for some of his techniques
and insight, but this was never based on much fact, just mere
speculation. Their relationship continued until Warhol's death.
By
1984,
many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his excessive
drug use and increasingly erratic behaviour, including signs of
paranoia. Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine
in a feature entitled "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American
Artist" in 1985.
As Basquiat's international success heightened,
his works were shown in solo exhibitions across major European
capitals. Basquiat travelled to Africa in 1986 and his work was shown
on the Ivory Coast.
Warhol's death in 1987 came as very
distressing to Basquiat. He continued to struggle with his
addictions. In 1988, Basquiat escaped New York City to his island
retreat in Maui. He died of a heroin overdose.
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